Wee: Scientific American is all “end the ban on psychoactive drug research!”
All across the land, jittery-handed folk are raising their hands! Hoping that Scientific American‘s pean directed at the virtues of psychoactive drug research is heeded! I mean, I mean…why not? I’ve Fringe. Walter Bishop has convinced me that psychoactives allow you to deny space, time, and plot coherence.
Scientific American recently published a spirited editorial calling for the US government to end the ban on psychoactive drug research. After the Controlled Substances Act was passed in 1970, drugs like marijuana, MDMA, and LSD were put on the Schedule I drug list, deemed to have no accepted medical use. That designation makes it impossible for researchers to determine their potential therapeutic benefits. Even in the case of cannabis, doctors in certain states are allowed to prescribe the drug, but scientists can’t inquire into innovative new treatments without going through a host of restrictive regulatory obstructions. In the magazine’s view, this is a shame. Instead, lawmakers should push for these substances to be moved to the less restrictive Schedule II designation. “If some of the obstacles to research can be overcome,” the editors write, “it may be possible to finally detach research on psychoactive chemicals from the hyperbolic rhetoric that is a legacy of the war on drugs.
